What Pride Month Means to Me

A straight man's story

The older I’ve gotten, the more likely I am to say exactly what I’m thinking. Though I still show a polite amount of restraint. Usually.

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Here’s a 6th-grade Sunday School question: “Did Jesus save his strongest condemnation for the religious or the nonreligious?” Pretty easy, right? And now, the follow-up: “Do American evangelicals reserve their strongest rebuke for the religious or nonreligious?”

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Now, the real question: Why are the two answers different?

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One of my “go-to” responses these days is, “Now, tell me how any of that is your business.”

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I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with a very proud and arrogant Christian woman. I say proud because she wears her Christianity like rank insignia on a military uniform, demanding that her “strongly held beliefs” must be honored, respected, and given preferential treatment. And I say arrogant because she’s quite taken with herself. I generally do my best to avoid such people. But sometimes I fail. She self-righteously declared gay people to be an abomination and trans people to be sick.

“Tony, aren’t you upset about the gays demanding equal rights and forcing their gay agenda on us?”

“What is “the gay agenda”?”

“You know, they want to force their gay beliefs on us!”

“Have gay people been coming to your house wanting to talk about their gay agenda? Have they been inviting you to their gay conversion meetings?”

“Well …”

“What someone believes or who they love is none of my business. Why should I care? Also, it’s none of your business,” I said.

She didn’t like my response. Like I said, I’ve gotten older.

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How is any of that my business or your business? Am I to deny my fellow citizen the same rights, liberties, and freedoms I claim for myself?

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I haven’t always been woke. <— isn’t that the dumbest thing? Wokeness! As soon as some knuckle dragger says woke as an insult, I know the next thing out of their mouths will be stupid.

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If by “woke” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes in empathy, compassion, and the happiness of my fellow citizen, if that’s what they mean by woke, then I’m proud to say that I am! And I'm trying to be more woke every day.*

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I was raised in a southern town in the 1960s, where being different, no matter what that difference was, led to ridicule and rejection. I’m guilty of being judgmental and narrow-minded. But when I knew better, I did better.

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When I was on active duty in the Marine Corps, being gay would get you kicked out. I’m so glad that is no longer the case.

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One night, during my second year in the Corps, I was on guard duty in the middle of the night with a buddy from boot camp. Pete was from Florida and had been a highly recruited high school football player. He was a great quarterback. But Pete opted to join the Marine Corps rather than go to college. It was no surprise that he was the Honor Man of our platoon. He looked like he just stepped off a recruiting poster. He was a Tom Brady-looking athlete with the intelligence and wit of Neil deGrasse Tyson. Everyone in Pete’s family was attractive. I met his parents and his twin sisters at our boot camp graduation. All of them looked like models. When I met his sisters, I could barely speak to them. They were the first girls near my age I’d seen in over three months. They were strikingly beautiful, smelled like heaven, and I was too tongue-tied to speak. Pete’s mom laughed and said, “Pete, does your friend ever talk?”

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At about 2am, the night Pete and I were on guard duty out on a far-off post in the middle of nowhere, he said, “Hey, man, I need to tell you something.” I had hoped that maybe he was going to tell me that one of his sisters wanted to go out with me. No such luck.

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He got serious and again said he needed to tell me something. “OK,” I said, “fire away.”

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After a minute or two, he said, “I’m gay.”

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Well, I laughed it off, thinking he was just messing with me. But he was serious.

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After I got over the initial shock, my mind started racing. I think maybe my face looked worried that he was going to make a move on me. “Relax, hillbilly,” he said, “you’re not my type.” I was immediately relieved and then a little miffed. “Hey! What’s wrong with me??” I demanded. That became an ongoing joke between us! “Hey! What’s wrong with me??”

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I asked him why he would risk everything to tell me such a serious thing. He said he needed his good friend to know his authentic self. I was the only person he told. Of course, I never told a soul. That was in 1977. I was honored that he thought of me as a close friend, that he was willing to tell me everything and be transparent, trusting me to keep his secret.

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My friend, Pete, was a Marine’s Marine. He was a great athlete, dependable in any situation, and clear-headed. I could put my life in his hands, and he could put his in mine.

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Ever since Pete came out to me, I’ve been a bit protective of my LGBTQ friends. And when some self-righteous judgmental so-n-so condemns or criticizes them, I just say, “Tell me again how any of that is your business?”

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Things that are none of my business? Your business. And vice versa.

Happy Pride Month to all of my friends who face hate and hypocrisy every day.

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*With kind apologies to John F. Kennedy.

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